Most freelancers who sell pure services owe no sales tax. Consulting, writing, coaching, design labor — most states do not tax them at all. What catches people is digital products. And this is a different tax from the two you already know. Income tax and self-employment tax come out of your profit. Sales tax was…
Two sentences stop most of it, both in the agreement. One is a numbered deliverables list that closes with “work not listed is outside the scope of this agreement.” The other caps revisions and names a price: “the fee includes two rounds; additional rounds and out-of-scope work are billed at $150 per hour, on a…
In May 2025 the middle half of US graphic designers earned $23.58 to $39.34 an hour, web developers $30.88 to $60.69, and management consultants $37.48 to $64.12. Those are Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, and they are wages paid to employees. As a freelancer you have to charge close to double the median to land…
Eight clauses decide what happens when a freelance project goes wrong. Scope and deliverables, payment schedule, revisions, kill fee, IP transfer on final payment, confidentiality, termination, and governing state. Everything else is furniture. Write two of them carefully and make it the IP clause and the kill fee, because those are what pay you when…
Forming an LLC takes five steps: check the name, name a registered agent, file the articles of organization, get an EIN, and write an operating agreement. Four of the five cost nothing. The state filing fee is the only real bill, and it runs from $40 in Kentucky to $300 in Texas. Then there is…
A German client owes you 2,000 EUR. Depending on how they send it, between $2,119 and $2,311 lands in your account. That is a $192 spread on one invoice, and most of it is not the fee. It is the exchange rate. The fee you see is not the fee you pay Every cross-border payment…
A late fee is collectible only if it was in the signed agreement before the work started. You cannot add one in month two. The usual clause is 1.5% a month, which is 18% a year. On a $4,000 invoice 45 days late that comes to $88.77. Write the clause in anyway. Just do not…
An invoice gets paid when the person holding the checkbook can process it without asking you a question. That is the entire test. Nine blocks pass it. Who you are, a unique invoice number, the date you sent it, and a due date written as a real calendar date. Then their reference number, the line…
Five things decide your first year, and the rest is detail. Open a second bank account and move 25% to 30% of every payment into it the day the money lands. Get an EIN from irs.gov, free, in about ten minutes. Record every business expense from your first dollar. Pay the IRS four times a…
One Schedule C, one state, no employees, no inventory, no S corp election. That is a software return, and paying a person several hundred dollars to type it in buys you nothing you did not already have. Six specific things move you across the line. Until one of them happens to you, the answer is…